ABERDEENSHIRE craft beer firm BrewDog is three-quarters of the way towards raising the £10 million it targeted as part of a crowdfunding round due to close in just over two weeks’ time.

The business launched Equity for Punks V in October with the aim of raising £10m to fund expansion of its Ellon headquarters.

So far over 16,000 investors have bought into the round, raising £7.6m between them. That brings the total raised across BrewDog’s five UK crowdfunding rounds to nearly £49m from over 63,100 investors.

While the investment target is £10m, founder James Watt said the firm is looking to raise up to £50m to accelerate its plan to build breweries in China and Australia, open ten more bars in international markets and launch a television channel.

BrewDog, which earlier this year also raised $7m from investors in the US, has long been an advocate of the crowdfunding model, which has enabled fans of its beers to own small stakes in the business.

This year it also sold a larger stake of 22.3 per cent to US private equity house TSG Consumer Partners, gaining a £1 billion valuation in the process.

That meant that anyone who paid £230 for one share in the brewer’s first crowdfunding round was sitting on a shareholding with a nominal value of £6,590.

However, they could only cash in a maximum of £527.20.

At the launch of Equity for Punks V Mr Watt said that the total BrewDog needs to achieve all its investment goals is £180m, half of which has come from the TSG investment.

“EFP V won’t get us an additional £90m but if we raise a decent amount then I can bridge the gap with various forms of bank financing,” he said.